How We Nearly Doubled Math Scores with Kevin Finnegan Transformative Principal 333

<p>How We Nearly Doubled Math Scores with Kevin Finnegan Transformative Principal 333</p> <p>Social Media: When we saw Math could be a discussion, it totally changed everything.</p> <p>Kevin Finnegan is the principal of <a href="https://www.prairiehill.org/prairie-hill/principals-page">Prairie Hill School</a> in Illinois. His students recently showed a 77% growth in Math, and we talk about how he made that happen.</p> <ul> <li>Prairie hill is the school and the community comes together around it.</li> <li>Northern Illinois, PK–4th grade.</li> <li>9 years as the principal.</li> <li>Mission statement: Students first, always.</li> <li>PLC school</li> <li>Reformed schedule so that every day (4 teachers per team) have an hour of common collaborative time every day.</li> <li>Why are we making this decision? The students are always the bringback.</li> <li>Norms: imagine the students you are talking about are here.</li> <li>To be a great principal is easy. You just have to have a great staff.</li> <li>PE teacher said, “I want students more.”</li> <li>Each class has 10 half hour blocks each week: Art, PE, STEM,</li> <li>Always been a high performing district. Makes change really hard when you have had success in the past.</li> <li>staff is competitive within themselves.</li> <li>Noticed that math scores were less than we expected.</li> <li>Dove into the data.</li> <li>Computation was awesome, but they struggled with elaborating on their thoughts.</li> <li>In every math assignment, adding the words, “I know this because…”</li> <li>If you see something that can be done in Kindergarten it can be done anywhere.</li> <li>Ready Math - iReady as platforms for learning.</li> <li>Standards based School, done in isolation.</li> <li>Common language in math.</li> <li>Didn’t get good training at first, but then got good training and that made a huge difference.</li> <li>Math has always dealt black and white.</li> <li>Math didn’t have to be one answer, it could be a discussion, totally changed everything.</li> <li>Talking abou